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U of I: the university as I experience you

‘and I experience you as experiencing yourself as experienced by me’.

That IS intense political graffiti – jaunty dick and balls and all. I think when you’re little, encountering messages where you don’t expect them can be really exciting (still is, but, you know, different).1 As a very little kid, I would be bundled into the back of the car when mum drove into town to pick my dad up from work. I think I was just out of booster seat mode but still in ‘fuck if we are going in the car I need to take this blanket and my favourite dog’ mode.2 The lasso goes around and around and around until the car passes and it is beyond view. I’m sure I saw a similar cowboy in town, perhaps on K Road when driving through with my folks. I just assumed that Las Vegas was the city and that whatever I saw on TV took place here. There were no boundaries for countries, no distance or time between us.
Everything was just always happening here and now.3

I immediately thought of just throwing in a kind of circular narrative of footnotes: ones that started out conventionally academic in their format and content, but then disintegrate from there into more personal thoughts and abstractions,4 even visuals/symbols beyond language as such – why can’t jaunty dick and balls be a footnote?

You’d never know it to look at it, that anything was wrong. Unless you happened to see one of the discarded pigs heads on the boat ramp.

Or the FUCK YOU FUCK FACE carved into the wooden tunnel of the jungle gym.

FUCK YOU
(jaunty dick and balls)
FUCK FACE

The ability to picture the route in his mind, navigating each segment of the journey is very weird. Like he has a block. Losing the connector paths from one building to another after decades out of Berlin, the translator left it out because she thought it was boring to go on and on about buildings and streets, later on someone else was all like ‘this is a forgotten masterpiece of retrospective flânerie’. I mean, people have written about all that since long before Baudelaire was drawing jaunty dicks and balls, surely.5 The sometimes jarring overlaps of academic language and actual life as lived / the geography were all feeling pretty relevant but it was nice to feel like thoughts could be what walking was for.

Like you said, the references to an end of an era / the sometimes jarring overlaps of academic language and actual life as lived / the geography6 were all feeling pretty relevant. When i meet someone like you and there are these shared memories from different times and places or similar types of feeling,7 I feel like a room has opened up in my mind. A room8 between us with an adjoining room. When i go in that room, you are there.9 Or maybe you’re out but you left your umbrella behind. There is crossover in our experiences, and gaps where they don’t meet too.10 I like these gaps.

You probably weren’t even born then. Or maybe just or maybe you saw the jaunty dick and balls before I did. Imagine that etched into the mind of a new baby. Just more information that does not have meaning until so many more experiences have been digested. History is so much about sharing.11 The inability to picture the route. A block. Losing the connector paths from one building to another after decades out of the city. (The translator left it out because she thought it was boring to go on and on about buildings and streets. Later on someone else was all like ‘this is a forgotten masterpiece of retrospective flânerie’.)

You and I pass in and out of the space at our leisure. There were no boundaries for countries, no distance or time between us. Everything was just always happening here and now.12 All these many gathered seemingly unimportant fragments constructed such a strong set of beliefs. I still find empty offices after hours exciting sites of potential, which they are.

There is a shared space between us. With two adjoining doors. You and I pass in and out of the space at our leisure. Leaving bits and pieces of information. Less pointed than clues, more like remnants from living and moving around and through the space.

I leave pigs heads and jaunty dick and balls. Partially blocked out paths. You leave yellow paint, phone calls, support for rebels and an appreciation for the magical monotony of still suburbs.

The experience of experiencing someone else’s experience. In my own mind the symbols described above are etched, I thought forever in the form in which I found them. But reading my experiences as your experiences and trying to sketch them out on the page, I have to carefully reconstruct the old way as this new way has taken over.

And by this general sentence I mean something quite specific.

The pig’s head was on its side, cut at an angle through the neck. Its jaw stuck open, large teeth. I didn’t know pigs had teeth?

Mangere Bridge was on the other side of the mountain from my house, the side with the picket fences and sparkly water (go for a walk around the suburb via google maps: you can see everyone’s swimming pools, the ambitious fancy architecture, the complex street layouts (multiple bulbous dead ends) ), so picturesque, it seemed so distant at the time. You’d never know it to look at it, that anything was wrong there. Unless you happened to see one of the discarded pigs heads on the boat ramp. Or the FUCK YOU. FUCK FACE carved into the wooden tunnel of the jungle gym.

As a very little kid, I would be bundled into the back of the car when mum drove in to town to pick my dad up from work. There was a stone wall facing the building, and on it, someone had sprayed, in a really strong yellow, EAT THE RICH. It was one of my favourite things. I knew it meant rich people, who I imagined to be the man from the monopoly box, and I knew from the confident logic of the yellow paint that they deserved to be eaten.

It can be any kind of room – a library, a kitchen. New Flavour. Even my cube-shaped office in Arts 1 is any kind of room if I lie starfished out on the sensibly thin carpet. I could almost imagine it was this room.

A car drives through 1970’s/80’s Las Vegas. From the car I see a neon cowboy with a flashing lasso. The lasso goes around and around and around until the car passes and it is beyond view. I’m sure I saw a similar cowboy in town, perhaps on K Road when driving through with my folks. I just assumed that Las Vegas was the city.

The Mt Eden village had, at its unofficial starting point, a sign saying “Mt Eden: Home of the Arts.” A boy from Metro took to it with a sharpie so it said “Mt Eden: Home of the BORGOIS Arts.” He also wrote FUCK FACISM in black on the yellow of a traffic light post. I touched it every day. I saw him swing his lasso and figured that must be the most happening part of town. To re-remember with this new flavour. I can’t help but wonder what did it mean, eat the rich?

A bunch of ideas to apply to walking, to going through space, that were nothing at all to do with the concept of physical exercise as an end goal in and of itself. My wheel alignment sucks.

I mean, people have written about all that since long before Baudelaire was drawing jaunty dicks and balls, surely.